From the opposite side of the street I scrutinized the exterior of the house. Through the glass door I could see nobody in the hall and there was nothing to indicate that anything was amiss. So I crossed the road and entered.
The floor-tiling in the hall was loose and had long needed repair, but I tiptoed over it gently and without noise. Then, with one foot on the bottom stair, I stopped dead. What was that disturbance on the first landing just over my head? I listened intently.
Whispering.
There must be two or three people on the first landing, conferring in low tones, and from the direction of the voices it was clear they were just outside the Journalist’s door. I caught the word “pick-lock,” and somebody passed some keys, one of which seemed to be inserted in the lock.
Thieves, possibly. But robbery was becoming rare in these days when the bourgeoisie had scarcely anything more to be relieved of, and anyway why should the Journalist’s flat particularly be selected and the theft perpetrated in broad daylight? It was far more likely that the dwelling was to be subjected to a sudden search, and that the raiders wished to surprise the occupant or occupants without giving them time to secrete anything. In any case, thieves or searchers, this was no place for me. I turned and tiptoed hurriedly out of the hall.
And very foolish it was of me to hurry, too! for I should have remembered the flooring was out of repair. The loose tiles rattled beneath my feet like pebbles, the noise was heard above, and down the stairs there charged a heavy pair of boots. Outside was better than in, anyway, so I did not stop, but just as I was slipping into the street I was held up from behind by a big burly workman, dressed in a leathern jacket covered with belts of cartridges, who held a revolver at my head.
It is a debatable point, which tactics is more effective in a tight corner—to laugh defiantly with brazen audacity, or to assume a crazy look of utter imbecility. Practised to an extreme, either will pull you through almost any scrape, provided your adversary displays a particle of doubt or hesitancy. From my present bedraggled and exhausted appearance to one of vacant stupidity was but a step, so when the cartridge-bedecked individual challenged me with his revolver and demanded to know my business, I met his gaze with terrified, blinking eyes, shaking limbs, slobbering lips, and halting speech.
“Stand!” he bawled; “what do you want here?” His voice was raucous and threatening.
I looked up innocently over his head at the lintel of the door.
“Is—is this No. 29?” I stammered, with my features contorted into an insane grin. “It is—I—I mistook it for No. 39, wh-which I want. Thank you.”
Mumbling and leering idiotically, I limped off like a cripple. Every second I expected to hear him shout an order to halt. But he merely glared, and I remembered I had seen just such a glare before, on the face of that other man whom I encountered in Marsh’s house on the day of my first arrival in Petrograd. As I stumbled along, looking up with blinking eyes at all the shop- and door-lintels as I passed them, I saw out of the corner of my eye that the cartridge-covered individual had lowered his revolver to his side. Then he turned and reentered the house.
“The blades are pretty blunt, I am afraid,” observed the Doctor, as he produced his Gillette razor and placed it on the table before me. “They still mow me all right, but I’ve got a soft chin. The man who smuggles a box-full of razorblades into this country will make his fortune. Here’s the brush, and soap—my last piece.”
It was late in the afternoon of the same day. I sat in the Doctor’s study before a mirror, getting ready to perform an excruciating surgical operation, namely, the removal with a blunt safety-razor of the shaggy hirsute appendage that for nearly six months had decorated my cheeks, chin, and nether lip.
The Doctor, as you see, was still at liberty. It was with some trepidation that I had approached his house on this day when everything seemed to be going wrong. But we had agreed upon a sign by which I might know, every time I called, whether it were safe to enter. A large box was placed in the window in such a position as to be visible from the street. Its absence would be a danger-signal. The Doctor had suggested this device as much for his own sake as mine: he had no desire that I should come stumbling in if he were engaged in an altercation with a delegation from No. 2 Gorokhovaya, and there was no house in the city that was immune from these unwelcome visitors. But the box was in the window, so I was in the flat.
Before operating with the razor I reduced my beard as far as possible with the scissors. Even this altered my appearance to a remarkable degree. Then I brought soap-brush and blade into play—but the less said of the ensuing painful hour the better! The Doctor then assumed the role of hairdresser. He cut off my flowing locks, and, though it was hardly necessary, dyed my hair coal-black with some German dyestuff he had got.
Except for one detail, my transformation was now complete. Cutting open the lapel of the jacket I was discarding, I extracted a tiny paper packet, and, unwrapping it, took out the contents—my missing tooth, carefully preserved for this very emergency. A little wadding served effectually as a plug. I inserted it in the gaping aperture in my top row of teeth, and what had so recently been a diabolic leer became a smile as seemly (I hope) as that of any other normal individual.
The clean-shaven,
